@Young:
I would think there is restrictions on intellectual property such as game mechanics, I know we are only talking about copyright laws, but you guys are making it sound like I could recreate Axis and Aillies as long as I rename it and give it a whole different look and feel.
Look at the game RISK - you have territories, armies, combat/non-combat/reinforcement phases. Or look at Fortress America where you have units called Bombers, Infantry, etc. Or any other game where you buy your units, make your moves, collect income (or cards or whatever) and place your units.
The sequence and the name of the steps may change but those are details. The basic concept is that you have a game, where the board is divided into territories/zones, and players make their individual moves using units in a sequence. This idea/mechanic doesn’t belong to WOTC or any other corporation - it can’t be patented or registered, it would be impossible to implement and control it.
WOTC or other corporations develop a game they are merely using ideas/concepts that are universal and putting them to practice with their own twist (images, text, artwork, trademarks, etc.) but they don’t own the basic logic, just the practical application (board games, artwork, site elements, etc.)
So yes, you can make and publish and sell your own board game that completely reproduces the A&A game mechanic as long as you don’t use any elements that are unique to Axis and Allies or WOTC. You can make it with aliens, zombies, world war 1 or even world war 2, whatever.
So why doesn’t this happen more often?
Well what happens is most companies (except most of China nowadays) will prefer to make their own practical application (which then has copyright and trademark) rather than just making a generic copy because they want their products to be recognized by costumers as unique (for advertising and marketing). Companies have usually no interest because they prefer to get out their own product, unless it’s a major public hype about the product and there’s lots of money to be made.
What happens in China is that the copyright/trademark law is mainly ignored by everyone, including the government, and so you have companies making copies of products but just copying the process (and violating copyright/patent law) instead of coming up with their own (cheaper - no money spend on royalties or research/development), and giving the copies similar names to trademarked ones (Sanyo instead of Sony, etc.) to help to sell.
There’s already an example of someone cloning A&A for years and selling it as an expansion to the original game - World at War from Xenogames.
This is similar to what happens when companies make clones of products, like a PC/Mac clones - the copyright/trademark is owned by the developer, so if anyone wants to use any part of the product it has to pay them (on this case, either the whole application or part of the code). But if a smart programmer reverse-engineers the code, figures out how it is done and comes up with a new different (and usually better) way of putting it into practice, then it’s legal. That way copyright works both ways - it protects the creator’s work while at the same time allows for further innovation and competition.
